Savitri

  V

'The Godheads of the Little Life'

      Aswapati has seen clearly enough that all the Kingdoms in the Empire of the Little Life—even the most advanced in appearance —are encased in a giant ignorance. But as he peers closer into this empire, he is able to glimpse the godheads behind it:

      As when a search-light stabs the Night's blind breast

      And dwellings and trees and figures of men appear

      As if revealed to an eye in Nothingness,

      All lurking things were torn out of their veils

      And held up in his vision's sun-white blaze.⁶⁴

These are the forces that urge, however obscurely or unconsciously, the 'little life' to strive for the higher and larger life; these are "the little deities of Time's nether act", "imps with wry limbs", "errant divinities trapped in Time's dust", in sum, "a trepidant and motley multitude". Fallen godheads these, who warp everything on earth:

      All models they corrupt, all measures cheat,

      Make knowledge a poison, virtue a pattern dull

      And lead the endless cycles of desire

      Through semblances of sad or happy chance

      To an inescapable fatality.⁶⁵

All is perversion and defeat now; yet there lie concealed in them the seeds of ultimate purification and triumph. As yet conscious life seems to be at the mercy of these insidious promptings from the depths of the unconscious. This must go on till the wrong suggestions are superseded by right suggestions from the far home of Truth and "Infinity takes up the finite's acts". Only then will end this nightmare nether life that holds us in thrall.

      What is this teasing paradox of Creation? The Spirit of its own accord wears the insignia of limitation and becomes inconscient Matter—"a body sleeping without sense or soul". There is at first "only an etheric Space"; then, through the processes of expansion and contraction, come touch and friction, force and energy:

      An ocean of electric Energy

      Formlessly formed its strange wave-particles

      Constructing by their dance this solid scheme,

      Its mightiness in the atom shut to rest;

      Masses were forged or feigned and visible shapes;

      Light flung the photon's swift revealing spark

      And showed, in the minuteness of its flash

      Imaged, this cosmos of apparent things. ⁶⁶

The play of 'blind'chance is controlled by the "fixed and immutable" laws of Nature. From this ordered material universe—the Kingdom of matter and energy—there wakes up at some auspicious moment "a dream of living"; thus life arrives on the cosmic scene. But life by its

Page 92

very nature is no static divinity, for it hides in its pulse "a consciousness with mute stifled beats of sense"; and in an agony of excitement and uncertainty it gropes for mind. The brute becomes man, equipped with the "delicate enginery" of mind. When man acts, he relies not on the instinct alone (as does the brute) but also on the play of thought's processes. From the marriage of matter and energy, first life, then mind, have ensued and now there are higher potentialities still:

The illumined soul-ray fell on heart and flesh

And touched with semblances of ideal light

The stuff of which our earthly dreams are made.⁶⁷

The unseen indwelling Spirit, the mighty Witness, sees all and facilitates further advance "towards the still greatness of a distant hour".

      The play of mind on the material universe and life's realms is enterprising and exciting, but it cannot effectively 'control' events, and it cannot pluck the heart of the mystery of existence:

      This minute elaborate orchestrated life

      For ever plays its motiveless symphonies.

      The mind learns and knows not, turning its back to truth;

      It studies surface laws by surface thought,...⁶⁸

 The mind sees darkly, and gathers inconsequent crumbs of Truth in a rats-alley hunting-ground! But deep within "a puissance acts", there is a power working "concealed in the subliminal secrecies", and in the result "speech leaps, thought quivers, the heart vibrates, the will/ Answers and tissue and nerve obey the call".⁶⁹

      The surface mind is thus only a puppet; mental processes and creations are but shadows and hence hardly affect the essential quality of life or the ultimate destiny of the soul. Insect, ape and man, all share a similar fate. Man—even thinking man—spends his little hour in "little things", in the monotonous circle of love and jealousy and hate, of joy and heart-pain and strife. Convention and routine deaden our lives, or we seek an escape through "lust's hot glare" or

Page 93

"passion's crimson stain". All our endeavours—even those of Science the Giantess—leave our life unaltered, the same, the same as ever. Only religion is a sort of cure, though it is really a self-deception rather than a cure; what use religion's "unprovisioned cheques on the Beyond?"

      However, Aswapati can also see that this spectacle of Mind-moulded, mind-directed life is no more than "a provisional scheme". There is a "deeper seeing from within", and the promise of a rich response from above. The present tale of error and ambiguity and failure must soon have its ending, and its sequel will speak of "muffled throbs of laughter's undertones" and paint the portrait of "a heart of bliss within a world of pain". There will be no chapters detailing life's little ironies, no inset elegies, no tragedies, no farces; with the greater Self informing the self within,

      All shall be captured by delight, transformed:

      In waves of undreamed ecstasy shall roll

      Our mind and life...

      The body's tissues thrill apotheosised,...

      Like a clay troll kneaded into a god

      New-made in the image of the eternal Guest,

      It shall be caught to the breast of a white Force

      And, flaming with the paradisal touch

      In a rose-fire of sweet spiritual grace,

      In the red passion of its infinite change,

      Quiver, awake, and shudder with ecstasy.⁷⁰

This splendorous possibility is awaiting to be enacted, and "our hearts must inform with heavenly strength...and cleave the darkness with the mystic fire".⁷¹

      Cheered by the promise of this possibility, Aswapati races yet further, from the Kingdoms of the Little Life to the Kingdoms of the Greater Life; the passage is through seas of darkness, and only his own spirit's inextinguishable flame guides him through the abysses and brings him safely to his next destination.

Page 94